The most dangerous thing about Donald Trump is that we have become so used to his abhorrent behavior that we treat it as normal.
He routinely insults female reporters as “dumb” or “stupid” when he doesn’t like the questions he is asked. And the barrage of social media posts spewing nightly from the White House has lost impact with its relentless regularity.
But the non-stop craziness has blinded us to the obvious. The truth that is hiding in very plain sight every day.
Our president is losing his mind.
The dam that was holding a 79-year-old’s thoughts and actions in check has broken. His disinhibited behavior is no longer that of a cogent, albeit untraditional, leader. He is an old man rambling about his swimming pools and his ballrooms while the world burns.
He is asked about the war he started in Iran and talks about a “fat slob” friend who discovered cheap GLP-1 drugs and how it was a “genius” plan to shut down the Strait of Hormuz (and consequently, the world’s oil supply).
To acknowledge that much is concerning in a nation that, despite some evidence to the contrary since January 2025, still retains some checks and balances.
The Democratic Party, crushed into paralysis by Trump’s second election victory, finally seems to have gotten its s--t together. The courts are holding firm (sometimes), and there is reason to believe that the American public will come to its senses in November.
But as Trump arrives in Beijing to meet Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader in the world—one without those same checks and balances—his cognitive decline is way more perilous.
One by one, America’s allies have decided they can no longer talk any sense with Trump when he strikes out like a scolded child every time they do something he doesn’t like.
Now we must worry about what America’s enemies might do.
Trump’s first presidency was marked by his bizarre talks with “friends” like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, and by his musical-chairs administration that changed whenever the music stopped.
But the president is 10 years older than he was when he was first elected in 2016.
For the first year of Trump 2.0, the president seemed determined to hold his discipline even as he wrought havoc, closing USAID, ordering mass deportations, and setting Elon Musk’s chainsaw on Washington’s bureaucracy.
Susie Wiles and maybe even Stephen Miller circled the wagons, keeping the Cabinet intact.
But they can no longer keep Trump’s mind on track. The billionaire with the common touch was supposed to make life easier for the working people who had become disillusioned with the status quo. The reason he won’t talk about affordability is that he can’t afford to: the cost of living is going up, not down.
He has finally fired Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, and other officials who crossed him, and sidelined Miller, who was regarded as his chief henchman. Staffers talk of chaos behind the West Wing walls. Of all people, Musk has returned to join the party for the state visit to China.
Last week, three dozen clinicians—including Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Eric Chivian—lodged a statement in the congressional record declaring that Trump was unfit to be president and should be removed “with the greatest urgency.”
They highlighted the president’s deterioration of cognitive function and his “grandiose and delusional beliefs.”
The statement said Trump showed a “marked deterioration in cognitive functioning, evidenced by disorganized and tangential speech, rambling digressions, factual confusions, unexplained sudden changes of course in strategic matters, both national and international, episodes of apparent somnolence during critical public proceedings.”
It also said he displayed “grandiose and delusional beliefs, including assertions of infallibility, imagery of himself as Pope suggestive of a divine mission, being a mythical warrior hero, depicting himself as combat pilot—dropping feces on civilians, and claims that his decision-making authority is unlimited—with no need to consider domestic and international laws and constrained only by his ‘own morality.’’’
Tellingly, the physicians noted Trump’s “significant loss of self-control (disinhibition) and getting stuck on the same thoughts or actions, unable to let go or move on (perseveration), including seemingly compulsive, manic-like late-night communications—e.g., 150 social media posts in one night—fixation on perceived enemies, persecutory ideas, and prolonged, disproportionate attacks on specific individuals and institutions."
It is these nighttime social media blitzes that are the real clues to Trump’s mental state. With the exception, perhaps, of his longtime assistant Natalie “the human printer” Harp, Trump’s acolytes, including Wiles, the gatekeeper, have no idea what he is posting.
Some nights, he appears to get less than 5 1/2 hours of sleep. He is left to give full rein to his narcissism.
Check out the Mayo Clinic definition of a narcissist, and I dare you not to recognize the president of the United States.
“Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.”
During his erratic White House “weaves,” Trump often points out how attractive guests visiting the White House look. At some point, probably long ago, Trump fell in love with his own reflection.
Now he rarely looks up. He has become so enamored with himself that he appears unable to listen to reason.
Few people would argue that Joe Biden’s mental decline should have been acted upon during his presidency. He covered it up by shrinking from the limelight and letting others run the country.
Trump’s cognitive collapse is so much more dangerous. Because he could talk us into World War Three.
